Microsoft to Cancel Xbox Live (No not Xbox 360 Live, Xbox Xbox Live)

That’s right Microsoft has announced it’s going to axe the original Xbox Live. In a post on his blog, Major Nelson has said that the service will be stopped on the 15th of April meaning you will not be able to play any online multiplayer games on the console. You will also not be able to play the multiplayer of backwards compatible games on your 360.Now you’ll have noticed that in the title I refered to Microsoft as M$. Something that is commonly associated with a Sony fanboy, calling out their “arch-enemy” for trying to rob their customers of every last penny. And that name has never been more appropriate. Let me explain. The reason for the services discontinuation, according to Major Nelson:

While I can’t comment on the specifics, this change will allow us to continue evolving the LIVE service with new features and experiences that fully harness the power of Xbox 360 and the Xbox LIVE community. We did not make this decision lightly, but after careful consideration and review we realize that this decision will allow us unprecedented flexibility for future features.

BULLSH*T! I know I sound like I’m ranting because I am. Let’s break what he said down. Firstly, he can’t comment on specifics, no one can never comment on the specifics. Why not? Because they never want you to know the specifics. But these are specifics of what? Oh of course improvements to their service. Making things better for you right? How? They can’t tell you that because it’s too specific. But apparently it’ll harness the full power of something! How are you going to harness the full power of the 360 and Live? Or is that a specific? If you have half a brain, alarm bells should be ringing as soon as you see Major Nelson’s statement. Microsoft is obviously doing this to make more money, profit maximisation is the main goal of any company and M$ is no exception. It’s clear that the running costs of the original Xbox Live have outweighed the revenue, which I imagine is little to none, created from the service. While this decision is not illegal or immoral, it certainly doesn’t make Microsoft very popular (not that they are already). EA have done a similar thing, all be it on a smaller scale, by shutting down the servers of 25 of its sports titles. There are two reasons why they did this, first it cost them money and wasn’t bringing in much profit. Something I’ve already made the parallel to. Secondly it was because those people who were playing the old sports games weren’t playing the new ones. Solution? Take away one of the main features of the game and the players will be forced to buy the new version of the game. Resulting in increased sales and more profit. This is also Micorsoft’s objective to sell more Xbox 360s and Xbox Live Gold subscriptions. Then them’s some nice words about how they thought long and hard about whether or not to take your toys away from you, making money on the process but remember it’s good in the long run, right? Well if you spend more money on their products and services it is.

This is obviously a move by Microsoft to cut costs and increase profit margins. Microsoft suffered last year, like many other companies, missing its average quarterly sales of $14.37 billion dollars by $1 billion. It’s shares also fell by 8%, on top of expected operating costs rising $300 million. Bottom line at the shareholders meeting: They were losing money and something had to go, something that wasn’t making them money, that was Xbox Live.

Now I would like to talk about why the shouldn’t have taken away the service. There are many players of the original Xbox Live. While we’re not talking anywhere near 20 million like the current Xbox Live but we are talking in the thousands, that’s just the people who play regularly, it doesn’t include those people who come back every so often to play some of their old favourites. There is a lot of love for retro games and now the last generation are beginning to fall into that category, but what if when you go to play a classic one of the most appealing features of that game, multiplayer, isn’t playable. You bought the game, way back and on the box it guaranteed multiplayer yet this it cannot be accessed. That’s the really big issue, you paid for the games with multiplayer it should have multiplayer. There is nowhere where it says you’re renting multiplayer and after a while it’s going to disappear. While the majority of people will shrug their shoulders and go, “More friends for me on the 360”, the loyal Halo 2 fanbase or the fans of the plethora of other Xbox titles aren’t going to be so happy. They’ll hate being forced over to another console, and will most likely abandon M$ all together. But at the end of the day as long as people will be happy to pay a gold subscriptions Microsoft doesn’t care.

So do you have any thoughts on the matter? Will you be rushing to get your Xbox out of the closet and play some last-minute Halo 2? Leave a comment.